Yesterday evening, I had a 19 year old patient who was having a miscarriage (spontaneous abortion). She was a very healthy girl with no past medical history, with the exception of recurrent urinary tract infections.
This time urinary tract infection had terrible consequences though. Normally, she would just drink gallons of cranberry juice and sometimes take antibiotics, but she wasn’t able to slow the progression of this UTI. Her simple bladder infection kept getting worse and worse and she soon got a kidney infection too. We think that this kidney infection may have precipitated her miscarriage.
Getting UTIs during pregnancy is potentially dangerous. According to healthline.com “Pyelonephritis [kidney infection/UTI] during pregnancy is also a leading cause of preterm labor, which puts the baby at high risk for serious complications and even death.”
Unfortunately, many women are uneducated about the consequences of UTIs, especially in pregnancy. Try to prevent UTIs – your health and your unborn child’s health depends on it.